The daemon

Life was good. My career was moving along and I was married and S was pregnant with our first child. We lived in Lawrence Kansas at the time. S's pregnancy was very difficult. She bled a lot and continually passed clots. We went to the Emergency room in Kansas City in the middle of the night many times. The pregnancy held, though. S went into labor mid February 1976. I called the Dr and he said wait until the contractions got longer. That evening I started to get really nervous about things so I brought her to the hospital, a good hour's drive. As she got out of the car her water broke and she was taken up stairs while I did the paper work. By the time I got upstairs to the waiting room things had already begun. It was a short but nervous wait. They called me in to see S and she was quivering, but pleased things were over. My first son had been breach and premature. He was delivered by a breach extraction which is almost never done these days. All I can say was the Dr. was very good and very confident. Aside from being small my son was basically ok.

We had an anxious two weeks waiting for our son to put on enough weight to come home. It was very hard for S to come home with the baby still in the hospital. We visited daily though and were able to hold him and to feed him. It was an anxious, but still wonderful time. When our son came home he was very small, just 5 lbs. We had to feed him special formula, an ounce every three hours. We split the duties so neither of us lost too much sleep. I really got into the baby maintenance and nurturing. That nurturance got into me also. It triggered and ignited a storm within me. Something about holding him in my arms and feeding him caused those old female feelings to return. They returned with a vengeance this time though.

I not only began dressing again, but this time I started taking estrogen. S had some birth control pills that would be unused and some unfilled refills. I started with those. I eventually graduated to rather large doses of Premarin. My breasts began to grow and it was both wonderful and frightening. Other things began to happen also and my sexual functioning began to change. The University library was a great place to do some research and I discovered transsexuality and information on what the hormones would do eventually. About three months into taking Premarin I became alarmed at the developments. My breasts were visibly enlarging and I was beginning to loose sexual functioning. I stopped!

Sexual functioning returned, but my breasts didn't shrink. They just got softer and stopped growing. I did much more research and discovered potential surgeries and long-term consequences. The thought went through my mind at that time that I might be transsexual, but at the same time I rejected that. I was able to stop after all, wasn't I? I didn't want to have surgery, did I? Three months later I was taking estrogen again. It would become a pattern of life for me for a number of years. I would take whatever estrogen I could get until I would get alarmed and then stop for a while. I did that even after we move back east. Needless to say, each time I would go on the estrogen my breasts would get a little larger. I also started removing hair from my chest with a handheld electrolysis unit. I was consumed. S never said a thing if she noticed. She found some panties once, but we had had a female student house sit and pet sit while we were on vacation and she accepted that they were hers (of course they were mine.)

Life somewhat settled in. My son grew. He had one little inguinal hernia problem which required surgery, but that healed quickly. We enjoyed him and I think we enjoyed each other. We had friends we had grown close to in Kansas and I had my little secret. Several times it dawned on me that I might have a real serious problem, but there didn't seem to be any real available resources. Surgeries were being done far away and even the University of Kansas Med center didn't seem to have anything but the fertility clinic. Well my fertility was a settled thing, much more settled than my gender was. My gender started to become a real problem to me. This was in spite of having an on-going marital sexual relationship with S. In the past, having an active relationship with a girl or woman seemed to stop all gender issues for me. Things had become different for me. It was a difference that affects me to this day. At the time I was 31 and though I did not know the term I was Gender Dysporic as hell! Perhaps I could have transitioned then, maybe I should have, but I tried to keep up living as a man. My problems got worse though and never really went away.

Next time I'll go into moving back East.

Shel